by A. J. Aalto
“And it was a really bad one!” I whispered frantically.
“Well, I’ve gotta go pick up my mom,” Declan said casually, like it was something he did every day on his way to get groceries and fetch the mail. “So good luck with allllll that.”
“It’s all good. I have diplomatic immunity.”
“No you don’t.”
“I don’t, but I have a flamethrower.”
“No you don’t.”
“I don’t, but I have a lovelorn yeti. Unfortunately, she’s not here. I could really use Betty the Yeti right now.”
At least I had Betty’s nail, for all the good it would do me. I think I’d rather have the yeti snuggles. A hug would really help right now.
Declan motioned to the scout while he backed away. “You sure you’re going to be okay?”
“There are not enough nopes in the world to answer that!” I squawked. “Pretty sure I’m hosed.”
“Well, stall him as long as you can. I’ll be quick.”
“You’ll be quick?” I sputtered. “You’re diving into an Arctic trench, dodging wyrm larvae, to crack open a shipping container that may or may not be trapped in or under a glacier.”
“It’s fine, Dr. B.,” he said lightly. “I have bolt cutters. Also, there’s global warming. That ice is right shitty, as ice goes.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “I really hope climate change is working in our favor. That’d be great. Could you fucking hurry, please?”
“Hurrying!” he promised, dropped his bag, and started to run.
“Wait!”
He looked back, his black curls flopping in his face. “What?”
I shook my head fiercely. “Don’t die, okay?”
He flashed me a big smile. “Steady as she goes, Glenda.”
I couldn’t bear to watch him go into that freezing, wyrm-infested water, and tried not to hear the clumsy, slapping splash. Rask had deployed a rowboat to mark the exact place where he thought he remembered House Duchoslav leaving the earliest sets of shipping containers, but Rask was far too busy managing the failing fog to the northeast to help Declan go free-diving for revenant royalty.
With one eye on the blizzard brewing in the Olmdalur, and one eye where the troll ship was sliding up onto the crusted ice coast, I dropped my go-bag off on the snow to review what I had; there wasn’t much. My mini Cougar had four bullets left. I had a curved yeti nail painted Pussylip Pink, a golden Lilith’s Heart seed pod, and some crusty human jerky dripping with funked-up honey. I had the fake canopic jar; maybe I could huck it at the troll's head and buy myself a second or two to live. I had my Glenda Hasenpfeffer wig and a pair of zero-prescription, horn-rim glasses. I had Harry’s now-filthy vicuna scarf and my last pair of clean gloves, the crimson ones that looked like I’d been disemboweling a reindeer with my bare hands. I had a bandaged arm and a stubbed toe and the beginnings of a caffeine withdrawal headache. I had a broken heart and a reeeeeeeally rancid mood brewing because of Mark Batten’s fuckoffery, which would probably lean things slightly in my favor, since the rage felt a little homicidal.
The troll, on the other hand, had a massive war hammer. It looked to be only slightly smaller than a Volkswagen on the end of a telephone pole. He stepped off the ship while his oarsmen steadied it along the coast. A real, live troll. His flesh was the color of frostbite, mottled purple fading to black in places. Everything about him was sharp angles; pointed chin, narrow jaw, high, long ears. His eyes were a fascinating blend; in response to dim daylight conditions in the high north, troll eyes had developed typically light irises and an epicanthic fold, which made perfect sense to me, as they must have developed to protect the trolls' eyes from the cold and windy conditions of the northern Siberian habitat from which they’d been driven. He was even bigger up close, at least eight feet tall, towering above me. He really didn’t need the war hammer. The fact that he was even brandishing it was sort of ridiculous. He stopped thirty feet away and watched with a cocked head as I shuffled through my things.
“Holy tittyshits, I’m rump-humped,” I said, mostly to myself because I didn’t figure the troll cared one way or another.
He squared his shoulders for a stand-off. I abandoned my stuff and showed him my fists. He looked at them and blinked doubtfully, like he couldn’t believe I was even trying.
“Uh, hi,” I said conversationally. “So, you’re Manflay Bonehack. And I’m Marnie. You’re super-huge. Nobody warned me about that.”
He swayed one step closer; the way he looked at me made me feel like a bug skittering across a sidewalk, about the get stomped by a curious toddler.
“What’s it like to have arms like that?” I asked. “Must make chores way easier?”
He made a sound like a jungle cat purring and sniffed the air between us.
“Sorry, I’ve been on the run for days. I bathed, but I’m told I still smell like wet dog. I don’t want to dwell on that right now if it’s okay with you. Personal problems, you understand.” I smiled nervously. “You must be really strong, eh? Gotta be honest, I’ve always been attracted to men who could tear a truck in half. It’s a sickness, really. But I should warn you… I’m not as wimpy as I look.”
I didn’t know if this guy understood English, or maybe he couldn’t imagine that was possible, but he certainly understood my shift in tone. One edge of his upper lip curled back to reveal a brown canine tooth. I showed him my painted yeti nail, held between my knuckles like a woman holds her car keys while walking through a dark parking lot.
“See this nail, motherfucker?” I said, raising my voice to seem threatening. “It’s a magic nail. You better get back on your boat and flee. Flee from my magic nail!”
He didn’t look too worried about it. He closed the gap between us by ten feet and let the hammer fall from his shoulder. I felt the vibrating impact as it hit the ground in my cold, frozen feet. He growled and said something that sounded like, “Yieldling.”
His booming voice made me jolt and I took off running to the left. He did not give chase. I ducked, feinted twice, bolted to the right, pelted in the snow in a complete circle around him. He just watched me. I ended up back by my go-bag. “What was that, you might be wondering?” Me too. I danced on the balls of my feet, feeling light and agile. “Cardio! I’m really good at it, cuz it seems like all I’ve been doing lately. I outran a yeti! Not that she was chasing me, really. I can outrun you. Run circles around your troll ass. Deke you out.”
The troll licked his thin, greyish lips and squinted at me like I might be brain damaged. I was thinking the same thing; after all this plane travel, lack of Harry, lack of espresso, stress, monsters, fairy nonsense and now this, I’m sure my poor brain cells were taking a knock.
“Also,” I said, “I’ve got this… um, this… thing in here, just a second,” I used my left hand to sift through the items in the snow and grabbed the pod. “Golden seed. Lilith’s Heart. Yeah, that’s right. I’ve got one. You don’t have one. You wish you did! Wanna know what I can do with it? Come closer and find out!”
His narrow eyes glittered at me, and then began searching the Olmdalur for what else might be here to stop him. Clearly, I was boring him.
“That’s it!” I growled, throwing my stuff down like I was tossing the gauntlet. I peeled off my crimson gloves and threw them in his general direction. They fluttered at his feet. “This people-never-takin’-me-seriously shit is really too much. Don’t you know who I am?” I flung my arms out, taking up lots of space like a male mountain gorilla trying to scare off a challenger. “I’m the Great White Shark of Psychic Investigations. I’m the Litenvecht Späckkenhuggar. Yo, motherfucker, I even said it right this time! How d’ya like them apples?”
He knew the Orcish words; his massive eyebrow twitched up.
“Yeah, be afraid,” I told him, showing him my jar, holding it up. “See this — blurk! — candied mummy meat?” I felt my gag reflex dance and nearly yurped again. “If I eat this, you better be runnin’. Cuz look out!” I shuddered and my throat mad
e an involuntary kachk noise. “What kind of souped-up maniac eats this, right?” I put the jar down and tried to scare him with meaningful oogly-boogly fingers that came out more like disappointing jazz hands.
His head jerked back, and I saw a flicker of uncertainty.
“Oh, you don’t like that?” I asked. “Do my oogly-booglies give you the heebie-jeebies, Manflay?” I started doing a nifty combination of jazz dance moves, mystical-looking hand gestures and fancy footwork, all meant to intimidate and/or buy me time by confusing him. I might have thrown in a little bit of the running man and the sprinkler, too. I would have moonwalked, but I always fucked that up, and now was not the time for that.
It seemed that it might work for a second, and his grip tightened on the handle of his war hammer. Having exhausted my disco repertoire, I completed my assault with the kind of jive and jiggle moves that would have qualified me three seconds of ill-deserved YouTube fame. I wiggled my hips and shook my booty and boogied closer, not daring to lose ground now that I had his attention. He took two more lumbering steps back from my flailing.
He straightened slightly, stretching his neck back like he had a crick in it. Then he thumped his belt area with one hand: thwap!
“My awesome dancing is not an offer to slob on the knob, trollface,” I told him.
He stomped closer, no longer interested in my jiggling and witchy fingers, and reached down to swipe the gold Lilith’s Heart pod from the snow by my feet. I squawked and slap-chopped it out of his hand. It plopped to the snow between our feet.
He growled and darted forward to howl all up in my grill. Spittle shot out from between his teeth and misted my face and hair. His breath smelled like fish guts. The severed heads on his shoulder spikes offered mercifully dry and silent screams. My face scrunched up as though I could close myself off to the stink. When he was done bellowing, I retorted with my own shout.
“Shut uuuuuuuuuuup,” I yelled. “I’m not done dancing!”
He made to swipe the pod again, but his size made him less agile than I was. I got to it first, and popped it in my mouth for safe keeping, because I am a complete, unthinking idiot.
The pod began to sting against the roof of my mouth, but I crammed my lips tight even as my throat tightened to refuse the acid entrance.
Manflay jabbed a hairy finger at my lips, wriggling it as if to worm it in between them. He pried at my lips but I held firm. I ground out a frustrated fuck-off noise and held my teeth tightly together, though the wet heat of my saliva seemed to be melting the Lilith’s Heart fast. Rivulets of lava were running to the back of my tongue and I tried to cough with my jaws still clenched shut. It tasted green and sour and fiery with heat. The troll considered the sweat on my upper lip and the suffering in my suddenly wide eyes and started making a noise that I soon recognized as a chuckle. Hot breath streamed from my nostrils to fog the air in front of me and I whimpered at him.
Mouth full of gopping, horrible hot goo, I slurred, “Yoo ma’e me ‘oo fiff.” Stinging juices ran out the side of my mouth and down my chin. “Urg!” I said, before swallowing the rest of it helplessly.
My belly immediately revolted with a cramp sharp enough to double me over, and I barked an oof! Now the troll was really yukking it up, and even slapped a scrawny knee.
“Oh, I’m so glad my misery is entertaining, Manflay Bonehack,” I snarled, holding my savaged abdomen. “What a stupid name. You just wait until I can stand upright, I’m gonna—“ Another cramp stole my words and my knees buckled.
Manflay howled with laughter and dropped his hammer completely. He threw both burly arms in the air and shook them, dancing from one foot to the other. The Blue Sense reported that he was thrilled with this turn of events and curious to do some more experimenting.
“Don’t get your walrus skins in a knot, buster,” I warned him from my huddled position in the snow. “Any second now, I’m gonna rebound up out of this fetal position and plow you one right in the schnozzola!”
The third cramp nearly killed me, and a warning gurgle in my nether regions warned that this heat was moving through my system fast; I was at risk for soiling my pants in front of the scout and Declan and my future queen. I rolled into a tighter ball and wailed. The laughter died abruptly and I heard a clay clink and then a gooey sucking noise. A giant hand landed on me, and I prayed this was it…he was going to put me out of my misery by crushing my head in a spray of bone chips and brains against the ice.
But I was rolled over, and that hairless finger jabbed at my lips again; this time it was sticky. My eyes popped open and I tried to yell, “no!” Opening my mouth to yell was my second mistake. The troll, in an unexpected act of calling me on my empty threats, shoved a big chewy hunk of mellified man into my mouth.
I shouted yakkk and tried to spit it out. Manflay’s big hand slapped around my nose and jaw, like people do when they’ve given their dog a pill from the vet. I wriggled, kicked, and struggled like a disobedient puppy, but Manflay had me well in hand and was determined to help. He dropped to one knee next to me, his weight shaking the ground as it landed, held my head still with one hand while trapping my mouth shut with the other. This was not how I had ever pictured dying: held down by a troll with human jerky in my mouth. My back was cold from the snow and ice ground against my spine. Worst of all, the honey coated my tongue and trapped the acidic, spicy Lilith’s Heart remains directly next to the sensitive flesh of my tongue, doing precisely nothing to relieve the burning. Tears sprung to my eyes and began streaming down my cheeks and into my ears. I gazed up at him, sure his weathered face was the last thing I would see.
Though my forehead felt like a frozen pork chop, the Blue Sense finally stirred from the contact of his bare hand on my face; he wasn’t worried about me, or the Falskaar Vouras, or being alone here. Because he wasn’t.
“You lied!” I tried to say under his hand; though the words were muffled and distorted, he saw from the look in my eyes that I’d figured out his secret. He’d lied to his people. They were with him. The troll invasion had begun. He’d already told them it was safe and they were close behind him.
He saw the realization in my wide eyes and nodded slowly; I was right. They were already on their way, a whole horde of them. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
He was distracted by something in the distance, but at this point, I was losing hope. Suddenly, he erupted from our huddle with a burst of angry energy. At the same time, I felt a wave of ferocious, voracious, devouring hunger and craned my head back against the snow to see Declan at the coast dragging a dark, wet figure from the ocean. The troll bolted in their direction, raising his hammer as he ran. A foreign buzz awoke in my veins as Remy began to feed from an unexpected source: Rask’s crewmen. More than one. Three men who had been in the rowboat surrounded the lady’s prone body, offering their wrists in turn. The troll swung his hammer and pitched into the circle of DaySitters. The mortals screamed in unison and were either scattered or hurled aside by the brutal swinging blow.
Remy’s chin was slick with blood when she launched up from the snow to push him back, her form voluptuous after her quick feed, eyes bright, lips plumped and glistening. Declan’s power stirred as he channeled a telekinetic blow, tossing the troll to one side. It wasn’t enough. The troll was on his feet alarmingly fast. Remy shadow-stepped away from him and ended up beside me. She looked disappointed at how easy he was to dodge.
I managed to crawl to hands and feet, and finally to a crouch next to my pack. I picked up the yeti nail clipping, my final artifact. Lilith’s Heart was a boiling ache in my belly, churning around a glob of mellified man. I didn’t know what to do with the yeti nail, so I offered it up to Remy.
She took it with a little smirk. “Is that what I think it is?” Her voice was rusty with disuse, her accent a complicated French mess, but there was no mistaking from her tone that she knew she was here to kick all the ass.
“If you think it’s the nail of a yeti, sure. I brought the other two treasures, but Manflay ma
de me eat them.”
She secreted the nail into her palm and turned to face the troll, who was shrugging off Declan’s attempts to telekinetically toss him around.
The wind pushed the thick, wet hair back from Remy’s pale face. Her light eyes glittered as their eerie shade of green flashed over to chrome like Harry’s.
“You’re not about to release the Kraken, are you?” I asked her, only half-joking.
Remy smirked. “Not... exactly.”
“Whatever it is,” I asked, “can we deal with it?”
“I can. You?” She looked at me doubtfully. “No. And them?” She sighed. “They won’t like this one bit.”
I turned to see who she was talking about. There were shadows now in the blizzard, dark figures moving through the snow. The other revenant houses. Were they coming to help her, or to stop her? Did they know what she had at her beck and call? Would it be as bad as I thought? Would I be able to stop wanting to yark up the pod and the wad soon?
She cut her eyes at me, and I remembered her telepathic powers.
Remy held out one palm in a come-no-further motion, black lace sleeves cutting intricate patterns against her pale forearm, the Falskaar Vouras stopped as one, wary in their approach to begin with, and equally wary about obeying their future queen’s body language. Would they obey her words with more confidence?
Her face was serene, the soft green of her eyes going to hard Dreppenstedt silver as she accepted the mantle of power granted by her immortal father and the blessings of her station. In her first act as queen, she faced the troll scout and all the ships bobbing in the ocean behind him with the hint of a smile, and I started to believe that maybe this was going to work. Remy Dreppenstedt was either completely mad, or she had the biggest balls on the planet.
“Let him come to me.”
As one body, the Falskaar Vouras made no move to disobey, but I sensed this had less to do with respecting her wishes than fearing her abilities; if she got herself slaughtered here, I feared the immortals would stand and watch it happen rather than offer their assistance. It would be her first and last test, and only after she failed would they step in to stem the invasion. If she needed help, I might be her only ally here. I began assessing the competition with an eye to what help I might be able to offer. I could puke on somebody's boots and maybe cling to an ankle or to.
